Isaac's Torah

by Angel Wagenstein

  This, by the way, is also the case with our great prophet Moses, who took us out from Egypt with the promise to lead us to the blessed land of Canaan, but he got into such a deep conversation with God, the way that only two Jews can, and got so carried away discussing one thing and another, that instead of getting us to Canaan, for forty long years he dragged our tribe all over the desert. Such an extensive exchange of thoughts, as they say. Moreover Moses, as you know, had a stutter, which in no way facilitated the dialogue. They even say that one time when he was a young man, the pharaoh asked him if he had always had a stutter.

  “N-n-n-not always. O-o-o-only when I talk.”

  I don’t know what exactly they discussed, but without doubt they must have complained to each other. They even say some desert bird flew over and shat, can you imagine, on the head of our prophet Moses. He touched his head, looked at his smeared fingers, and with bitterness said to Yahweh, “And for the A-A-A-Arabs, they sing….”

  But we were talking about the service at the synagogue.

  After the prayers the rabbi Shmuel Ben-David came up to me. I had squeezed under my armpits one of the huge bound tomes of the Tractates of the Talmud and the Pentateuch with Commentaries, and I told him I wanted to return them because I had been called up. I said this not without pride, I admit—the young are fools, who believe that being summoned Under the Flags means that they acquire qualities that until now they’ve lacked. They don’t understand that in military service they’ll even lose the few qualities they had to begin with. And thus, full of unmerited pride, I went up to the rabbi—truth be told, not so I could say good-bye, but because he had a sister—Sarah.

  The rabbi invited me to tea at their place and said he would surprise me with another piece of news. His one-story house was in the little garden of the synagogue; you could enter the parlor straight from the courtyard. And just as I went in, whom should I collide with but Sarah. My face flamed and it seemed to me that maybe hers did too. The rabbi asked his sister to bring tea.

  So we sat there, the three of us, and drank tea. I didn’t dare look at her, though I felt her looking at me; yet, when I lifted my eyes toward her, she immediately looked away. On the whole, as writers say, the atmosphere was tense. Rabbi Shmuel, as if noticing nothing, intently set about the ritual preparation of tea with the pedantry you could find only in that region of the world, breaking the sugar with little tongs, and spooning the sour cherry jam into three small scalloped gold-rimmed china cups.

  “Do you know,” said the rabbi, “that joke about the rabbi who was the only one who knew the secret of making exceptionally wonderful tea?”

  Of course I knew it, but at that moment nothing could have been more helpful.

  “No one could make tea like his, and he guarded the holy secret of its preparation. Although the governor himself stopped by to drink tea, even to him the rabbi refused to reveal the secret. When he was on his deathbed, the elders said: ‘You’re on the point of departing, Rabbi; you’re not going to take the secret to the grave with you, are you? Tell us how to make your famous tea.’ Then the rabbi ordered everyone should leave the room and only the oldest man remain behind. And into his ear he whispered with his last strength: ‘Put more tea in the teapot, and don’t be stingy. That’s the secret.’ ”

  We laughed; Sarah’s and my glances met and immediately shifted away. I asked, “And what surprise were you going to announce?”

  The rabbi reached over and took from the buffet a little yellow sheet of paper—exactly like mine. “And me too—I’ve been called up. As a military rabbi. In other words, God isn’t going to leave you without a tzaddik, that’s to say, without a spiritual guide.”

  I was honestly delighted. “This means we’ll be together and together we’ll go on leave…”

  These words were directed toward Sarah and this time when I looked at her, she didn’t lower her eyes, and her glance, I thought, showed concern.

  “Or together we’ll die,” said the rabbi and quickly added, “I’m joking, of course. The war is already almost over and before long there’ll be peace.”

  “And who, by you, will win?” I asked. “Our boys or theirs?”

  “Which ones are ours?” thoughtfully said the rabbi. “And which ones are theirs? What does it matter already who the winners are, if victory will be like a short blanket. If you pull it up to cover your chest, you expose your feet. If you want to warm your feet, you expose your chest. The longer the war goes on, the shorter the blanket will be. And the victory will hardly warm anyone.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “One day you will. When both the losers and the winners will pay for broken crockery. As the prophet Ezekiel says: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Listen, I’ll tell you a story about the pope and the chief rabbi of Rome.”

  He was truly incredible, our rabbi Ben-David. For every occasion in life he had in the drawer of his memory ready-made stories; where I come from we called them khokhmi, something like parables, full of wise sayings. He began to tell his latest khokhma:

  “So the pope died, and the candidate for the new pope had, for his closest friend, the chief rabbi of Rome. The future pope said to him, ‘I have examined, my friend, the papal archives from countless centuries. And the same ritual is always repeated over and over again. There is a procession of ambassadors and royal envoys from all over the world coming to the new pope with gifts and good wishes. And all through these centuries, the last one to come is always the chief rabbi of Rome with his ten devoted elders. Having said whatever he has to say, the rabbi then turns to one of the elders and takes a faded envelope made of old parchment and hands it to the pope. This fellow looks at it and with an expression of mild disdain hands it back to the rabbi. The Jews bow and leave. This is how it’s been for centuries; this is how it will be this time. Tell me, my dear friend and advisor, what’s inside this envelope?’

  “ ‘I don’t know,’ said the rabbi. ‘I received it from my predecessor, may his soul rest in peace, he in turn received it from his predecessor, and so on, from the beginning of time. But what’s inside this envelope, I swear to God, I don’t know.’

  “ ‘Let’s do this, my dear brother,’ said the future pope. ‘As soon as you, the Jews, have come through the procession, and you’re always the last ones to do so, I’ll retreat to the library. One of my cardinals will catch up with you and invite you to visit me. Bring the envelope, and let’s see after all this time what’s inside it, eh? After all, there’s no such sin described in the Holy Book!’

  “ ‘All right,’ said the rabbi, who was renowned for his freethinking.

  “And so they did this. And when they were left alone in the pope’s library and opened the ancient envelope—what do you think was inside it?”

  “Well, what?” Sarah and I asked, almost at the same time.

  “Here’s what was in the old parchment: the unpaid bill from the Last Supper. Do you understand now what I was telling you before about bills that sooner or later have to be paid?”

  I nodded wisely as if I knew.

  Quite politely and even a little formally I said good-bye to Sarah, and thank you for the tea, and shook hands. The rabbi Ben-David saw me to the door. When I had just passed through the yard, right at the small gate to the street, his voice caught up with me.

  “Itzik, so what was it you came for?”

  I realized that in my confusion I had taken the Tractate and the Pentateuch, which I was supposed to have left with the rabbi. I turned back to hand them over to him and then I noticed the good, understanding little smile at the corner of his lips.

  THREE

  I was sitting at the edge of the ravine. Down below stretched out the fields of Kolodetz. A quiet stream capriciously wound this way and that between the blooming sour cherries and wild plums. Only someone who’s never been in Kolodetz
by Drogobych couldn’t imagine this blessed bounty—the fields of rye already turning blue, the green of the young barley and the yellow of the blooming coleseed, the puffy buds of the fruit trees and just above them, the white clouds in the sky. And you don’t really know whether it’s the earth reflecting the celestial grace or the heavenly magnificence or is it God, made lazy and contented because of the great May sun, contemplating His own Image in the grand mirror of Nature. In the distance along the pathway, Ukrainian women—you know them by their snow-white kerchiefs—were striding along on their bare white feet, and their song—a Ukrainian maiden song—drifted up in fragments, torn into waves by the mild wind. As a white horse cart passed them by, the women waved, and the man in the cart waved back at them, and you will easily guess by his wide-rimmed black hat that he was one of ours and that as he passed he must have made some spicy remark, because their ringing laughter flew all the way up here.

  Someone sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder, startling me. It was my uncle Chaimle. “Don’t be sad,” he said. “The soldier’s service is like measles, tonsillitis, whooping cough—you have to have them at least once in your life. Are you going to light a cigarette?”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You know I don’t smoke.”

  “I can’t imagine a war hero who doesn’t smoke! Here, take one!”

  I took a cigarette. Uncle Chaimle tried to light it for a long time with a big gas lighter until it blazed up with a smoky flame. I started smoking and coughing and we laughed happily through tears and smoke.

  “Do you really love her?” suddenly asked Uncle Chaimle.

  “Who?” I asked, confused.

  “The one on whose account you got a slap in the face from your father.”

  “Two slaps,” I said. “One from her, too.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Uncle Chaimle. “So you don’t have a sure thing there yet.”

  “I don’t even think about it,” I said with dignity. “It was just what it was.”

  “It shouldn’t be just what it was. You’re going to war, you’re going to be conquering countries and continents. In the capitals you’ve conquered you’ll be met by charming women with big heavy breasts who’ll adorn your gun with flowers….”

  “Uncle, please,” I said, embarrassed.

  “You will not interrupt me and you will look me in the eye when I’m talking to you. Where was I…? I’m asking you, where was I?”

  I swallowed with difficulty. “At the big breasts.”

  “Exactly. Okay. I can’t let you go unconsecrated to their warm bed. Tomorrow we leave for Vienna. This will be my gift.”

  I was beaming all over. “All the way to Vienna?”

  But Dad didn’t beam when that same night he said angrily, “But that’s very expensive!”

  “For you everything is expensive,” said Uncle Chaim. “And this time I’m paying!”

  We were sitting around the table, eating dinner.

  “And from where do you have such a lot of money, Chaimle?” asked my mother.

  “You’re not supposed to ask where money comes from, but what it’s for! I’ve got money to take your son to Vienna. To see our capital, before he goes for many long years in the trenches.” My uncle seemed to have gotten a bit carried away.

  “Long years?!” my mother cried out in horror. “But this war is going to end, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t understand anything about poetry. In poetry they say ‘long years.’ Or, for instance: ‘He rang the bell and it took an eternity before they opened the door.’ Well, how much time do you think passed by? Two minutes!”

  Uncle Chaimle stood up and said to me, “Tomorrow at eight sharp I’ll stop by with my cabriolet to pick you up. If there isn’t a delay, the train leaves at nine forty-five.”

  He reached into his small vest pocket for his watch, and at first, not realizing it wasn’t there, by habit started feeling his pockets, searching for it. Then, a little guiltily, he said, “I must have lost it.”

  “The gold watch?!” cried out Mama.

  “Well, so what if it’s gold?” Uncle said abruptly. “They can also get lost, can’t they? So, Itzik, tomorrow at eight!”

  He grabbed his hat, mumbled a “Shalom,” and sneaked out, embarrassed. Mama and Dad looked at each other: the source of the Vienna funds had been clarified.

  FOUR

  We were swaying back and forth in the third-class compartment. Uncle Chaimle was pensively looking through the window at the tangled telegraph wires and I was most likely drowsing, looking through the window, and then nodding off to sleep again. The compartment was full of soldiers, apparently on leave—some with crutches, some with heads all bandaged up. One of them asked my uncle what time we were due to arrive in Vienna. He courteously reached for his watch, and was searching for it again when he remembered that it wasn’t there, and furtively glanced at me. I pretended to be sleeping. “About five o’clock,” said my uncle.

  This reminded me of that rabbi on the train to Warsaw who was asked the time by a young coreligionist sitting across from him. The rabbi looked at him, and, without answering, wrapped himself up in his coat and went to sleep. In the morning, just before the train arrived at the Warsaw station, the rabbi said, “You asked me the time, young man. Right now it is eight-twenty and we are about to arrive.”

  “And why, honored Rabbi, didn’t you answer me last night?”

  “Because the road is long, young man, and if I had replied, you would have started chatting with me. Later on you would have asked if I live in Warsaw and at what address. Then one thing would have led to another, and you would have asked whether I have a daughter. And then one fine day you would have dropped by me for a visit and asked for her hand. And I have no intention of marrying my daughter to a person who doesn’t even own a watch!”

  I looked again at my dear Uncle Chaimle, who was now taking his turn at a nap. With his big curly reddish sideburns, and his jacket with its large square-checked pattern and an old, stiff bowler resting on his knees, he could have passed for a respectable provincial merchant of wheat or cattle, though he wasn’t one. He wasn’t anything in fact. Without a definite occupation, he was always full of grand new plans that, in the distant future, were supposed to end with a move to America. “The difficult thing,” he used to say, “is actually to land on the hard American soil. After that, everything goes like bread and butter. This isn’t Tarnov for you. This is America!” He based all his hopes on one invention, unknown in our part of the world—the electric vacuum cleaner, all the rage in America. He managed to get hold of some of these items and announced that he was collecting advance orders, but nobody ordered one, not because the merchandise was bad, but because in Kolodetz in the early years of my childhood there was no electricity yet and only our dear emperor knew when they were going to bring it in. Uncle delivered fifty gramophones with funnels and a bunch of records with popular German songs. With the greatest pleasure he would demonstrate the quality of the gramophones to anyone who was interested, explaining that the gramophone as such would raise the culture of our whole native region. He changed needles and records, people gathered to listen, patted him on the back, asked for more and more, until one day Uncle ran out of needles and didn’t have money for new ones. Not a single gramophone was sold, he piled up all the merchandise on some horse cart, and it disappeared who knows where. As far as I remember, his only real financial coup was the purchase of a large quantity of blankets from some military auction. In the dyeing process some mistake had been made and instead of being barracks-type brown, they were a rather dirty violet color with pink spots, but Uncle sold them at an extremely low price. Not too long afterward, and not without the participation of the Mode Parisienne tailoring atelier in Kolodetz by Drogobych, everyone was wearing the same wool suits or caftans of a dirty violet color, with pink spots. I don’t believe this business deal moved my uncle
even an inch toward the cherished borders of the United States of America. So, regardless of the financial coup with the blankets, Uncle was soon left without a penny in his pockets, but with a head full of ideas that sometimes brought him some bank note or other with a horribly small number of zeros. In those days, when some naive person in the café would ask to borrow some money, Uncle Chaimle would always reply, “Sure, when I come back from Paris.” “What?” said the other one, surprised. “You’re going to Paris?” And then followed Uncle’s answer: “I don’t dare even think about it.”

  Then the ticket inspector passed by and announced that the train was about to arrive in Vienna—the capital of our motherland.

  FIVE

  What can I tell you, my dear brother, about this sublime city; what can I compare it to? I’ve seen other cities, I’ve even been to Truskavetz, Strij, and Drogobych, but that would be like comparing our policeman Pan Voitek with His Majesty Charles the First or with our late, great Kaiser Franz-Joseph! Or if you know the one about Aaron, who was so absentminded he entered the synagogue without a hat, and the rabbi scolded him and told him to leave the holy temple at once. Because, he said, entering the temple with your head uncovered is a sin comparable only to that of sleeping with your best friend’s wife. “Oho, Rabbi,” said Aaron, “I’ve tried that one too. What a difference!” So’s the difference, roughly, between Truskavetz and Vienna.